The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, Part 10 of 17

The officials have left the frying pan and are in the fire. New horrors await them at every turn, and even worse choices.

The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 10 of Operation Arm Breaker. If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 yet, check them out first. This chapter also references The Man with the Silver Sword.

Content Warnings: Death, Gore, Violence, Gun Violence, Mild Swearing, Nazis

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
BRUDERSCHAFTSSAAL E, EBERKOPF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

Grease wrenched the door open and wheeled out of the way, letting Miller and Quint dash through first.

“Duck!” he shouted. Lucky hunched down but kept moving. He could hear the mannessers gnashing behind him, their sabered teeth snapping and scraping. The punt gun thundered, and the monstrous howls were reduced to high-pitched whimpers. More dogs leapt over their dying packmates, ignoring still bodies for moving ones. Grease yelled:

“Run, run!”

Bullets whipped past Lucky. He ran through to door only to find Miller and Quint pinned by fire coming from inside. Lead cracked against the cement wall they were ducking behind. Cold mist puffed out of three holes in Miller's chest, and Quint's arm had expanded into a freshly-scarred ballistic shield.

Lucky’s breath came in white fog. The building was cold as an icehouse.

“Keep your head down!” Quint shouted. Another salvo pounded into his shield. He didn't have to tell Lucky twice.

The rest of the squad piled in behind them. Grease let off one more punt gun blast then followed them in, slamming the door and throwing the closest furniture he could find, a metal desk, in front. A heavy thud shook the door and savage claws raked across it. Grease pressed his shoulder against it and jammed it shut with all his weight as he fumbled a fresh yellow beehive shell into his punt gun.

“This won't hold!” he yelled. His wide chest was heaving and puckered with fresh bullet holes.

“Gas, gas, gas!” Quint shouted. Another hound slammed into the door, scraping the desk back across the floor. Grease kicked it shut again. Everyone had dropped their guns onto their slings and gotten gas-ready, masks secured over their faces in an instant.

Lucky tugged his respirator down just as three panels in Quint's shield slid open and thumped. Smoke trailed down the building before bursting into white clouds.

The Nazi fire slacked off after a few seconds, replaced by panicked yells and violent coughing fits. Weapons clattered to the ground. Tear gas.

Quint spun around and jerked the door open. A snout lunged through the gap, spraying drool as it gnashed against Quint's metal arm. Its teeth were as long as knives and just as sharp, foot-long canines that slashed like machetes. He discharged a gas canister straight into the mannesser's gullet. The hound yelped, then gagged and ran.

Quint sent two more gas grenades out the door then cold-welded it shut for good.

Miller slapped tape over his hissing chest and turned the corner, grease gun leveled. It burped bullets in bursts, stitching up kraut stragglers.

“Move, officials!” Goldbrick shouted. He charged ahead, laying out a yelling Nazi officer with a double-barreled blast, driving the krauts back with the chattering Thompson in his other hand. The stinging gas swirled as he charged through. The officials moved up on his six.

The cold was beginning to cut through Lucky's uniform. It was freezing, with vents in the ceiling pumping frigid air into the whole building. Icicles as tall as Grease ran down the walls.

“What is this place?” Lucky asked. Before anyone could answer, the building opened up into a long gallery. Two rows of glowing blue cubes, each at least ten feet tall and riddled with tubes and cables, spilled mist across the tiled floor in a grid ten feet apart and hundreds of yards long. There were dark shapes inside the translucent cubes.

“Twelve o'clock!” Grand shouted. Another squad of Nazis swarmed into the far end of the building, black-clad and gas-masked. The officials scattered, taking cover behind the blocks. Lucky slid up behind one, planting his back flat against it. A chill cut him straight to the bone: the cubes were solid ice.

A half-dozen MP 40's opened up, chipping ice in crystal geysers. The blocks withered under the barrage. Lucky had to wipe slush off his gas mask lenses. It melted quickly into a thin, oily blue liquid. He could smell ammonia and fouler chemicals even through his respirator.

“Neff!” the Colonel shouted. The Frenchman tried to bring his rifle around, but a scathing volley pushed him back. A graze left blood running down his arm.

The fire ceased.

“They're circling around,” Goldbrick warned. His golden teeth were clenched tight as a sprung bear trap.

“Officials!” a voice called from the end of the gallery, “The Egyptologist is among you, did I see the pugilist general as well?”

“Gas the bastard!” Goldbrick ordered. Quint popped out and launched another canister. It arced past the rows of ice and flanking commandos, straight at a lone man, standing at ease at the end of the gallery. He was unarmed, and standing with his hands at his sides. His black SS uniform was unadorned, without badge or rank. Instead, he wore a white circle on the left breast. Lucky peeked in time to see his hand snap up and snatch the hissing canister out of the air.

“It is good to see you, Herr Colonel,” the man called out. He grinned, then squeezed the tear gas grenade with his bare hand. It exploded, coating him in its toxic spray. He didn't so much as flinch.

“What the hell...” Bucket started, until he saw the man's disfigured face. His skin was bleached white, his head smooth as an egg. He was one of Hitler's brainwashed elite, his Brotherhood. Lucky'd only seen one of them before, and that one man had killed two of the best soldiers he'd ever fought beside. Lucky's finger tightened on his trigger.

“Tear gas?” the Brother laughed. “Try to surprise me next time, Halistone.”

“Who is he?” the Colonel asked. Miller studied the man for a second before reporting back to the Colonel.

“Albrecht Metzger,” he told him. Lucky knew the name. Doktor Johann Metzger was the creator of the Vargulf.

“Are you certain?” the Colonel asked, but he remembered who he was talking to and said: “Cataloging reported him and Metzger's other sons killed.”

“So often, with regard to Nazis, one categorized as 'missing' is presumed dead,” Miller clarified.

“That is no longer my name, officials,” Albrecht snapped. “When I was born again, I earned a new one. I am the Brüder Null.”

Lucky knew enough German for that. 'Brother Zero,' the first of the Brotherhood.

“They are flanking, Al,” Goldbrick growled. “No time to converse.”

“He wants to,” the Colonel countered. “We need to keep him talking.”

“You seek to distract me? You are here because I want you to be,” Albrecht, no, Null, called out. “You are alive because I allow it. My Brüderchen hold this building and surround it. No one will enter, or leave, until they have my orders.”

The Nazi soldiers leaned around the blocks. The circles painted on their helmets had slashes through them; they were numbers, not emblems. Zeroes. These commandos were Null's personal army.

“Do you know where you are, officials?” Null asked. “You are in my nursery. Where I was born, cold, wet, and screaming, from the very wombs you cower behind.”

Lucky recoiled from the glowing ice. The shape within was obscured by tendrils of twisting frozen white and blue, but knowing what to look for, he picked out the silhouette of a man inside. Rubber tubes ran through the ice into him, socketed into his mouth, nose, and nethers. Copper wires wove through his eyes, arms, and legs.

“These are the Brotherhood incubators,” Miller realized aloud. “These tubes must feed neuro-catalysing cocktails into the hibernating men, while the wires transmit psycho-contorting messages to the goggles and headphones they are wearing.”

“These insulated wires are plugged right into their major muscle groups,” Bucket observed.

“Electrical stimulation would prevent atrophy and even increase strength during the process,” Miller said.

“This is not a voluntary process,” the Colonel suddenly gasped.

“That is correct,” Null called out. “Do you think the weak son of a weak man would have the strength to volunteer for greatness? No, he must be scraped hollow and built from nothing. Every new Brother is captured from the battlefield. He is incubated in ice, the raw flesh of the cosmos, and when he emerges he is a new man. He is loyal, fearless, merciless, and perfect in lethal combat and battlefield tactics. Some, of course, are born brain-dead, others go mad, but those who survive whole go on to be the greatest of the Führer's warriors. We even count officials in our ranks, those you thought lost or dead.”

“You wouldn't,” Goldbrick snarled.

“Official First Class Brookfields will be among the most vicious of my kin,” Null sneered.

“Ye bloody bastard!” MacLeod roared. The Scotsman had lead a team of men hunting the Vargulf all across Europe and Africa until they'd been ambushed by their prey in Greece. During a disastrous rescue mission a month back, the Colonel had only managed to extract a wounded MacLeod from the scene of the massacre.

“If you take such offense at his rebirth, perhaps you should not have left him to the mercy of the Vargulf, Scotsman,” Null snapped back.

“He was dead, they et him,” MacLeod objected. He slumped against the ice.

“Enough dawdling! You have hounds at your heels and the Brotherhood upon you, officials,” Null called out. “Your intrusion has roused Gerhardt and his creatures. I would protect you from them, if you let me.”

“Gerhardt?” Lucky started. The thought of that maniac raced through his mind, scarred and furious, covered in black hair and tearing through Lucky's skin with his fingers and teeth. A cold sweat soaked his back quicker than bullets and shells ever did. More than this Brotherhood assassin could.

“Nazis don't aim to protect!” Goldbrick yelled. One of the Brother's commandos leaned out of cover and the general let him have both barrels. The Nazi fell dead, kicking, with buckshot through his zero. His comrades opened fire again, forcing the officials back behind the ice. The block shuddered under the barrage.

“Stopfen!” Null ordered. His soldiers ceased firing. “We do not want to wake my Brothers.”

Goldbrick plucked the spent shells from his shotgun and stuffed a fresh pair in.

“We can't stay here,” he hissed at the Colonel. “He's about to lock this cage.”

“He said he wants to talk,” the Colonel ventured. “And by the sound of it, he is telling the truth about his men outside.”

The banging on the door had ceased altogether. The mannesser hounds had been pulled back.

“What do you want, Albrecht?” the Colonel called.

“That is not my name,” Null snapped. “I wish to come to an arrangement. Your lives, at this moment, for other lives.”

“We do not deal in death,” the Colonel countered.

“And we don't deal with Nazis,” Goldbrick snapped.

“You are American, general, what you deal in is greed,” Null told him. “But you must set aside your baser instincts if you wish to live through this day.”

Goldbrick readied a double-barreled comeback for the bleached assassin, but the Colonel convinced him to clam up with a hurried hand signal. Null continued:

“I would see my father and his patron, Sparteführer Abendroth, dead.”

The Colonel and Goldbrick stared at each other for a moment.

“We can promise that,” Goldbrick replied.

“I would not see them captured, or see them surrender, or left wounded. You must place a bullet in their heads. All of their heads.”

“What do you get out of this? A battlefield promotion?” Goldbrick asked.

“A deserved one,” Null confirmed.

“Why don't we just put lead in your head and keep going?” Grease called out.

“An I-soldier? How delightful,” Null said, his eyes glowing, his voice almost giddy. “My friend, one-in-four of the soldiers in this base are my Brüderchen. With my cooperation, you will have reduced your enemies by twenty-five percent, thousands of men in all. We will not aid your mission, but we will not hinder it, either.”

The Colonel and Goldbrick were arguing through clenched teeth at this.

“We've been trying to kill his old man for years,” Goldbrick spat.

“We are not pawns in Nazi power games,” the Colonel insisted.

“We could just turn around and plug him, too, when this is all over,” the general pointed out.

“What's to stop him from doing the same to us?” the Colonel countered.

“Nothing, but the fact that I having not killed you yet would be considered capital treason to my peers. My speaking to you is a show of good faith,” Null called out, smirking.

“I wish he'd stop that,” Goldbrick muttered.

“I am sure you have read autopsy reports on my fallen Brothers. Our hearing is quite sensitive.”

“Not too good at swimming though,” Sinclair hooted. He grinned under his bandages.

“You refer to those Brothers assassinated by your pet corsair,” Null grated. “It is difficult to swim when one is restrained and asleep, and the waters are freezing.”

“You have killed as many of ours,” the Colonel snarled.

“More, in fact,” Null sneered. “But let us not increase that number today. Do as I ask, and my men will not hamper your mission.”

“We agree,” Goldbrick shouted back. “Johann Metzger and Justine Abendroth. We agree.”

The Colonel's eyes went wide, but he kept his trap shut. He and the general had reversed positions as quick as they'd taken them.

“Do not leave them to their fate, do not wound them,” Null reminded them. “Hold their cold corpses in your hands.”

“I'll put the bullets through their heads myself,” Goldbrick said. “You have my word. Withdraw your men.”

“Brüderchen, gasmaske!” Null ordered through an ivory grin. On his word, his men stood and unclipped their helmets before peeling their respirators off. They were all men, young, Aryan, and battle-hardened, with the hard eyes of zealots and killers. “General, Colonel, more tear gas, if you would.”

“Give it to them,” Goldbrick ordered. Quint nodded, then leveled his shield-arm and thumped six tear gas canisters down-range. The unmasked Nazis immediately collapsed in fits of vomit and tears, doubling them over with racking, painful fits. Null watched his men reduced to shuddering lumps.

“Rückzug!” Null shouted. The Brother was unaffected by the stinging pepper particles cloying the air. His men peeled themselves off the floor and stumbled out, dragging their weapons and dead behind them. He waited until the last had staggered past and called back to us one more time: “Despite our agreement, I will still need the blessing of the Führer to take Abendroth's place. It must appear that I gave you a little fight before you continue your mission. You understand.”

“What is he doing?” Lucky asked.

“You, the young one with the dirty face,” Null called out, pointing right at Lucky who looked around, confused. “You are Ford, correct? I have heard of you.”

“What?” Lucky stammered.

“Gerhardt will be furious for this,” he hissed. He held his left arm out, away from his body. “Make it convincing.”

“He wants you to shoot him,” Grease whispered.

“Yes, and hurry up,” Null called out.

“He thinks I wouldn't kill him?” Lucky wondered aloud.

“Have you killed before, Ford?” Null asked.

“I've killed enough,” Lucky grunted.

“No, not nearly,” the Nazi replied.

“What makes you think I wouldn't put one between your eyes?” Lucky shouted. He lined up the sights of Benjamin's De Lisle on the middle of Null's bald Nazi head.

“Ask your general,” Null called back.

“We wouldn't survive the next five minutes without him, now,” Goldbrick confirmed.

Lucky sighed, forced his trembling hands still, and settled his aim on Null's left shoulder.

“No,” the Colonel whispered. “Use your Garand.”

Lucky smirked, then let the De Lisle down into its sling and picked up his M1 Garand. The standard-issue American rifle had a larger round and faster muzzle velocity than the suppressed British carbine. Lucky put Null in his sights, let a breath half go, then squeezed. The rifle bucked and drilled a thirty-ought-six bullet into the grinning Nazi. Null spun with the impact and collapsed to he ground.

“Did you kill him?” Grease asked. Before Lucky could answer, Null was on his feet again, his right hand clamped over the crimson pouring over his black uniform.

“Excellent shot,” he said. “But a platoon of tear-gassed soldiers and one bullet wound will not convince the Führer of my loyalty, so Brüder Zwanzig will have to complete the theatrics. Besides, were you all to fall to him, you would have no chance killing the Sparteführer to begin with.”

A massive figure stepped out behind Null, towering over him in immaculate painted golden armor, at least seven feet tall and six across. Brother Twenty's face was passive, a bored titan, bleached and bald and covered in staples and stitches. Dull steel had been bolted into his chin and across the bridge of his nose. His forehead bulged with reinforced bone. Zwanzig's pink eyes stared through the lot of officials.

“Zwanzig is not as talkative as I am, for he has not quite finished his treatment. He is new to us, a collaboration between forward-thinking scientists,” Null told them.

“Wait a second,” Grease said. He stared at the looming, silent Nazi. His mouth was moving, but he couldn't speak.

“Întări soldat,” Miller said, in Hellbörg's Romanian.

Grease gulped loud enough for the rest of them to hear. Zwanzig was what he’d been slated to become.

Zwanzig was staring, flexing transplanted muscles beneath gilded armor, wheezing as he stood over Null. He was also unarmed, but his metal carapace extended over every inch of his body: the spikes knuckling his gauntlets were longer and more vicious than the ones implanted in Grease's hands. Ax-head-sized blades graced his forearms and shins. A hand-painted mural of Nazi soldiers covered his broad chest plate, the phalanxed krauts charging up a shining hill, imperial eagles at their backs.

“Töte sie alle,” Null purred as he handed Zwanzig a thick helmet, its seamless steel forged to resemble the head of a furious eagle. The edges of its hooked beak looked as sharp as razors. The I-soldier took it and slid it over his head. Spring-loaded latches locked it into place. He grunted and stared at the officials through tiny eye-slits. Null melted away, letting his monster step forward. He called over his shoulder:

“Lass sie dich sehen.”

Bruder Zwanzig grunted as his master retreated. He rolled his neck around his armored shoulders then took an ominous step forward. He lifted one gauntleted hand and pointed at the officials.

“Null's playing both sides!” Goldbrick yelled. The general stood and blasted his shotgun. Buckshot skipped off Zwanzig's thick armor. Regular ordinance was not going to do the trick.

“Neff!” he shouted.

Zwanzig roared and charged, his thunderous steps building up to a full sprint, even under the hundreds of pounds of clanking armor. He was a train wreck on two feet, crashing forward on a collision course with his targets. A hollow, mournful cry echoed and grew in volume behind the eagle helm.

Neff had him dead to rights, and his anti-tank rifle shook the cavernous room. A supersonic round punched through the I-soldier's armor with sickening ease, leaving a perfectly-round half-inch hole in the stampeding man's upper-left chest. Zwanzig did not so much as stumble.

“Holy hell,” Lucky whispered. He'd seen Amie turn Jonesy inside-out from six hundred yards, even with his I-soldier upgrades. Zwanzig's golden armor was something else altogether.

“Everyone!” Goldbrick shouted. He picked up his Thompson and opened up. Rifle and pistol rounds joined his screaming .45's, careening off Zwanzig's helmet and chestplate. Showers of sparks washed over him wherever the Colonel's incendiary rounds hit, but he ignored all of it. Each second put him a dozen yards closer.

“Peashooters aren't working!” Goldbrick yelled. Before he could issue another order, Grease was past him.

The I-soldiers clashed with shattering bellows and seismic punches, each blow throwing its target off his feet. Their tree-thick limbs tangled together as they thrashed, slamming Zwanzig and Grease into an ice block. Bullets sank into and bounced off of both men.

“Cease fire!” Goldbrick shouted. Lucky took his finger off the trigger. He’d loosed an entire clip before he realized Grease was in the mix.

The I-soldiers didn’t notice one way or the other whether the barrage had stopped. Bullets meant little to them.

Their fists were like wrecking balls, pummeling each other jackhammer-fast. Blood, shredded bandages, chipped paint, and shattered ice flew from the fray. Grease reeled back and loosed a haymaker, but Zwanzig was too quick; Grease’s fist collided with the block, shearing it in two with a thunderous crack. The blurry human form inside split at the waist, the halves sliding either way as the block broke apart. Slimy red oozed over crystalline blue.

“Brüder!” Zwanzig grunted. He shoved Grease away hard enough to send him into another block, rocking the ice on its pedestal. The lumbering I-soldier desperately tried to pushed the split block back together, trying to fix the bisected man within. Chemical-tainted blood wept from the crack. A lump caught in Lucky's throat. The dead man could have been anyone: a prisoner, a partisan, even an official.

Grease snatched his punt gun from where it was dangling on its sling and leveled it at Zwanzig. The I-soldier recovered quick and slapped the gun as it went off, sending the beehive of sixteen-hundred BB's into another ice block, shaving half of it, and the man inside, away in a blast of purple snowflakes. What remained of the Brother inside slumped over, another forced brainwashee dead. Zwanzig tried to catch the corpse, but Grease's boot caught his helmet with a kick that sent him sprawling, his armor scraping across the concrete floor.

A snarl and slam shook the welded back door. Concrete dust sprinkled from its besieged hinges.

“What now?” Lucky asked. He couldn't decide whether to keep his rifle trained on the brawl before him or the failing door behind.

“Null pulled his men back,” Sinclair shouted. Claws scraped the outside of the door. The mannesser hounds were furious to get through. The krauts must have been starving them.

Zwanzig’s roar sounded loud enough in front to distract from the death behind.

He came at Grease with furious intensity, pummeling with his spiked knuckles, slashing at him with the blades on his arms, head-butting him with the sharp edge of his beaked helm. Grease was driven back with each blow. His skin hung in tatters. Punches sparked off the exposed, bloody steel that had been buried in his chest. Grease dropped to his knee.

“Neff!” the Colonel shouted. The Frenchman leveled his anti-tank rifle and fired. A muzzle flash as long as Lucky's leg exploded out of the barrel. Zwanzig's helmet snapped back and the giant staggered. Red mist sprayed from the fresh bullet hole in the golden eagle's beak.

Zwanzig did not fall. Neff fired again, but the I-soldier reacted with inhuman speed, letting the thick armor on his forearm deflect the heavy bullet.

“Layered armor,” Bucket shouted. Neff's anti-tank rounds were wasting all their energy penetrating the outer layer of Zwanzig's armor, and would hit no harder than a punch when they reached the metal plates and reinforced bones under his leathery skin. Nevertheless, the Frenchman fired again, but the monster swatted that round away as well, this time ricocheting the bullet clean through one of the steaming ice blocks next to him. Cracks spiderwebbed through the blue and a viscous stream of red dribbled from the hole.

Grease flew out of nowhere, tackling Zwanzig at full sprint. The Brother's blades raked across Grease's arms and stomach, splitting staples and scraping across steel and bone. Grease grimaced in pain but heaved with all his might, throwing Zwanzig through another ice block like a cannonball. Blue crystal and frozen Brother alike shattered. Zwanzig tucked and rolled to regain his footing, only to find himself staring down the barrel of the punt gun.

“Stop,” Grease sputtered. Blood was running down his face, out of split eyebrows and a smashed nose. Gashes across his chest, abdomen, and arms pumped crimson. Deep wounds splayed open across his chest and arms, with the metal underneath revealed, raw, and red.

Zwanzig charged, only to be met with a point-blank barrage of two-hundred-and-sixty buckshot pellets straight to his covered face. Zwanzig's feet went out from under him and he slammed to the ground, limp on his back.

The recoil was so powerful that Grease, wounded and bloodied, fell to a knee, leaning on his prosthetic leg. The punt gun clattered to the concrete. Lucky jumped to his feet to rush to Grease's side, but Goldbrick grabbed his collar and held him back.

“The bastard's still moving,” the general said before Lucky could twist out of his grip. He was right, the I-soldier was already pushing himself off the floor. Grease groaned. His grabbed the punt gun by its sawed-down barrel. The hot metal sizzled against his palm.

Not a single pellet had penetrated the warped monster's armor. Most had ricocheted, embedding themselves so deep in an ice block that they had cut it free from the floor.

“Stop,” Grease said again. His voice wavered with pain and desperation and empathy. Zwanzig glared at him and coughed. Red sprayed from the fifty-caliber hole in his helmet.

Grease heaved himself to his feet and raised the punt gun over his head. Zwanzig swiped at him with his blades, slower than before but no less deadly. Grease hopped out of reach, then clocked the monster with the long gun, ringing his bell. Zwanzig collapsed, then pushed himself back up. His boots scraped the floor as they sought purchase.

“Just stop.” Grease lifted the punt gun again, sledgehammer-high. Zwanzig got one foot underneath himself and pushed up off the floor. Grease brought the gun down, but Zwanzig was faster. He caught the gun in his hand, wrenched it out of Grease's hands, and flipped it around in a single motion. He lined up the wide barrel with Grease's face and pulled the trigger.

It clicked, hollow and spent.

Zwanzig roared in impotent rage again. Blood was running like a faucet out of the hole in his helmet. Grease's buckshot had scraped away most of the enameled painting from Zwanzig's chest, leaving only a single struggling kraut fighting his way up a muddy hill. He swatted at Grease, catching him on the jaw with steel knuckles, sending him back to his knee. The golden giant raised the punt gun like a mighty club, over Grease's split scalp and pulped nose.

“Du stirbst,” Zwanzig managed to wheeze. He reeled the gun all the way back and lurched forward, only for his arm to lock in place. One of Cheddarwright's arrows stuck in his armpit, where the joints of his armor met. His arm was stuck. Grease did not hesitate.

One powerful blow dislocated the distracted I-soldier's shoulder, letting Grease tear the empty gun out of Zwanzig's useless hand. He tossed it aside and landed a shattering haymaker on the Nazi's helmeted cheek, sending him sprawling back to the ground with his bell rung. More blood streamed from the bullet hole as Zwanzig struggled on the floor.

Grease wheezed, hurting and exhausted. He watched Zwanzig regain his senses, and regain his murderous drive. There was no way to bring the brainwashed, warped man back. Grease lurched over to the sheared ice block and wrapped his huge arms around it.

He huffed, then lifted it, frozen Brother and all. His transplanted muscles bulged and shifted, writhing in his body like snakes. Tubes and cables snapped to release the block from the floor, spraying hot fog and and white sparks in the cold air. A final effort brought the big blue block over Grease's head, casting a dark shadow over the murderous I-soldier.

“Stop,” Grease pleaded one last time. Zwanzig hissed behind his helmet, then punched a crack into the concrete floor.

Grease dropped the block like a boot on a bug. Zwanzig was silent as it descended. His armor crumpled under the weight. He died without a whimper.

Grease collapsed to the floor next to him, shaking and wheezing, laying in the spreading red paste.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin.